Space Law and Arbitration

Traditionally, space law was mainly limited to States and international organizations, but now the “commercialization” of Space is steep and accelerating.  In a report dated May 2022, Citi expects the space industry to reach $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2040, after the global space economy’s value reached $424 billion in 2020, having expanded 70% since 2010.  Whereas State actors were the only real driving forces behind the development of Space activities until about 15 years ago, private interests have no doubt driven the development of this nascent industry. 

These evolutions are likely to result in an increase in the existing types of space-related disputes, generate new types of disputes, and impact the ways in which such disputes are resolved, including disputes involving, among others, space debris, property rights, and frequency licensing issues.  Most famously, in Devas v. India the tribunal decided that India had expropriated the investor’s frequency spectrum and touched upon how physical presence is not necessarily a requirement for territorial nexus, thus opening the possibility for frequencies to be part of a State’s sovereign interests. In Eutelstat v. Mexico the tribunal rejected the claims of the investor regarding violations to legitimate expectations and fair and equitable treatment. The claims were brought in the context of use of frequencies at a given orbital slot and the requirement of satellite operators to reserve a certain amount of frequency capacity for the Mexican government.

This panel will address, among others, the following key questions:

• What are the main treaties, principles and rules of international space law?
• Can international investment treaties apply to disputes arising from space-related activities?
• Which are the existing areas of space-related disputes and where can new disputes be expected to arise in the future?
• On what bases could tribunals uphold jurisdiction related to disputes involving space ventures and/or space debris?
• What are some examples of State acts or omissions that might be attributable to a State in space?
• What, if anything, makes arbitration more or less attractive than other dispute settlement processes used in resolving space-related disputes?